Gabriela D'ANNUNZIO.
Born March 12, 1863, Francavilla al Mare, Pescara, Italy. Poet, novelist, dramatist, short-story writer, journalist, military hero, and political leader, the leading writer of Italy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His best known novel, Il Trionfo della Morte (1894) features a Nietzschean hero. Indebtedness compelled him to flee to France in 1910. When the war broke out, he returned to Italy to urge his country's entry into the war. After Italy declared war D'Annunzio became an enthusiastic combatant, seeking out dangerous assignments in several branches of the service, settling finally in the air force, where he lost an eye in combat. After the war, in 1919, D'Annunzio and about 300 supporters, in defiance of the Treaty of Versailles, occupied the Dalmatian port of Fiume, which he ruled as dictator until December 1920, at which time Italian military forces compelled him to abdicate. D'Annunzio subsequently became an ardent Fascist and was rewarded by Benito Mussolini with a title and a national edition of his works. He retired to Gardone Riviera in Lombardy to write his memoirs, and died in 1938.
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